Nuxt & Express server not getting api requests in production /dist

Question

I have a Nuxt app running successfully on my local server and all API requests are successfully running from the same server (using the serverMiddleware property in nuxt.config.js). When I run a yarn generate, the path to the API server is lost and no data is loaded. Below are a few screenshots.

Loads data successfully from the API.

Unable to find API

Here is an example of an api call in project_dir api/index.js file

const express = require("express");
const passport = require("passport");
const allRoutes = require("../api/routes/routes");
const guestRoutes = require("../api/routes/guest");
const fileUpload = require("express-fileupload");
const path = require("path");

// Create express instance
const app = express();
// Init body-parser options (inbuilt with express)
app.use(express.json());
app.use(fileUpload());
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: false }));

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, "../", "dist")));

/**
 * -------------- PASSPORT AUTHENTICATION ----------------
 */

// Need to require the entire Passport config module so index.js knows about it
require("./config/passport-jwt");

// Initialize Passport
app.use(passport.initialize());

/**
 * -------------- ROUTES ----------------
 */

// Imports all of the routes from ./routes/index.js
app.use(guestRoutes);
app.use(passport.authenticate("jwt", { session: false }), allRoutes);

console.log("express");
console.log(path.join(__dirname, "../", "dist"));


app.get("*", (req, res) => {
  res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, "../", "dist", "index.html"));
});

// Export express app
module.exports = app;

I don't know why I'm not able to get data from the API routes which I'm running on the same server.

Answer 1

Here is an in-depth answer on how to run an Express server alongside Nuxt: https://stackoverflow.com/a/72102209/8816585

First thing to know, is that you cannot have a Node.js server with yarn generate because it's using target: 'static' and as you can guess, when something is static, it doesn't need a Node.js server to be served to the end-user (only the html + css + js static files are hosted on a CDN or alike).
This mode is meant to host the code on Netlify, Vercel or alike, with no Node.js server available there.

Why is it working locally? Because you do have a Webpack dev server running (with a Node.js server so) for debugging purposes like HMR etc...

---

TDLR: this is normal (works as intended so far). More info on the given link above on how to make it work.

Answer 2

Mark provided us a link within the github space he maintains to exactly what we were looking for. The javahl windows code needed was found here, nicely prepared in zip files by version - https://github.com/subclipse/updates/tree/main/javahl

We used 1.14.0, found here - https://github.com/subclipse/updates/blob/main/javahl/subclipse-javahl-1.14.0.zip

Thank you Mark!